The William P. Preston Collection contains primarily three groups of material: papers of William P. Preston, prominant Baltimore criminal lawyer; correspondence of his wife Margaret Smith Preston; and correspondence as well as other material related to their daughter May Preston McNeal.

The items pertaining to William P. Preston are nearly all connected with his legal practice. Included are accounts, bills, and receipts associated with insolvancy and debt collection cases; case notes; court petitions; city tax assessments; sworn statements and depositions; deeds, wills, indentures, mortgages; and warrents. Preston specialized in criminal law and his papers deal with cases of debt collection, murder, assault, and robbery. Other types of legal activity such as divorce proceedings, estate management, libel and slander are also evident. Several separate legal cases are grouped together within the collection, such as the A.H. Simmons Estate activities (1850's), the Bank of Maryland Failure (1834-35), Barnum vs Barnum (1867), State vs Thomas Hibbetts (1870), State vs Clark and Cullen (1870), State vs Peter Corrie (No Date) and the Stewart Murder trial (1838). Preston's legal correspondence deals with the full range of his activities, but is primarily related to his clients request for assistence and communications with other lawyers.

Preston appears to have been a devoted husband and father, as witnessed by his many letters to his wife Margaret and daughter May. Margaret corresponded heavily with him and also her daughter. May's letters to Preston are scattered in this collection but are well represented in MS 711. The May Preston McNeal material consists mostly of correspondence with her mother, much of it while May was away at St. Joseph's College, a Catholic girl's boarding school in Baltimore. The family correspondence as a whole is for the most part made up of trivial observations and family news. Occasional references are made to current political events and less often, the civil war. Margaret, while a young, unmarried girl living near Gettysburg Pa., received numerous letters from would-be suitors as well as from a priest and a nun whom she knew concerning religious matters.

Other material in the collection includes a body of incoming correspondence addressed to Elizabeth Woodbury (1840's); a small number of items relating to Joshua Vansant McNeal, May's husband; a sizeable group of poetry written by Margaret Smith Preston's pre-marriage admirers and by various family members; an assortment of essays written on various subjects by William P. Preston; some records of St. John's German Catholic Church (1799-1841); papers relating to Henry F. and Philip C. Friese, Baltimore lawyers; documents associated with the Preston farm Pleasant Plains in Baltimore county. Also included in the collection are scrapbooks of William P. Preston relating to his political interests, most particularly his opposition to the Know-Nothing Party of the 1850's.

Note: See MS 711 and 1861 for additional material relating to the Preston Family. Also MS 1835